Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> [lbo-talk] Forcing Political Change (Booing Manning Marable)
> Jon Johanning jjohanning at igc.org, Thu Mar 18 05:42:31 PST 2004:
> >If they get enough votes to put Bush back in, they will be
> >absolutely blackballed and non-cooperated-with by the rest of the
> >U.S. Left from now to eternity -- left to sulk in their own little
> >corner, and St. Ralph with them. OTOH, if they don't get that many
> >votes, they will be considered pretty much irrelevant, too.
>
> The Anybody But Bush pundits who -- rather than simply advocating
> voting for John Kerry -- ask Americans not to cooperate with Ralph
> Nader and the Green Party are a vocal and yet tiny minority among US
> leftists; they are mainly sectarian intellectuals, few of whom are
> movement organizers and activists.
This is certainly my experience locally. Members of BNCPJ are (a) overwhelmingly ABB and (b) extremely friendly to me and the local Green organizer, despite our quite vocal anti-Kerry positions! No danger whatever of being isolated. In fact we've gotten fairly enthusiastic response to the position that the tasks of anti-war groups will increase in 2005 regardless of who wins the election.
I hope the kind of bitter and irresponsible sectarianism Jon exhibits above is as rare elsewhere as it is in Bloomington/Normal.
We had a fine demo locally on Friday and on Saturday in Chicago even the weather cooperated beautifully with us. It was disgustingly cold on Friday, and disgustingly cold again today, but it was the pleasantest day of the year on Saturday.
Carrol
Carrol